That praying-rug came from a Turcoman's camp;
By Tiber once twinkled that brazen old lamp;
A Mameluke fierce yonder dagger has drawn,
'Tis a murderous knife to toast muffins upon.

Long, long through the hours, and the night, and the chimes,
Here we talk of old books, and old friends, and old times;
As we sit in a fog made of rich Latakie,

This chamber is pleasant to you, friend, and me.

But of all the cheap treasures that garnish my nest,
There's one that I love and I cherish the best:
For the finest of couches that's padded with hair
I never would change thee, my cane-bottomed chair.
'Tis a bandy-legged, high-shouldered, worm-eaten seat,
With a creaking old back, and twisted old feet;
But since the fair morning when Fanny sat there,
I bless thee and love thee, old cane-bottomed chair.

If chairs have but feeling, in holding such charms,

A thrill must have passed through your withered old arms! I looked, and I longed, and I wished in despair,—

I wished myself turned to a cane-bottomed chair.

It was but a moment she sat in this place,

She'd a scarf on her neck, and a smile on her face!

A smile on her face, and a rose in her hair,

And she sat there and bloomed in my cane-bottomed chair.

And so I have valued my chair ever since,

Like the shrine of a saint, or the throne of a prince;

Saint Fanny, my patroness sweet I declare,

The queen of my heart and my cane-bottomed chair.

When the candles burn low and the company's gone,
In the silence of night as I sit here alone-

I sit here alone, but we yet are a pair

My Fanny I see in my cane-bottoned chair.

She comes from the past and revisits my room;
She looks as she then did, all beauty and bloom;
So smiling and tender, so fresh and so fair,
And yonder she sits in my cane-bottomed chair.

A TALE OF THE BIG SNOW.-BIZARRE.

After the last heavy snow-storm Mrs. Peewitt discovered that the roof leaked, and that afternoon on her husband's return from the office, mentioned the fact to him, together with her belief that great damage to the ceiling might be

averted by his going up after dinner and shoveling the snow off.

Confound the old house, any way!" he exclaimed, tossing his hat into one corner, his coat down on the lounge, and his rubbers into the coal-scuttle.

"What's the use of swearing?" asked Mrs. Peewitt, as calmly as a summer noon.

"It's enough to make a saint swear; you can't look crosseyed at the old shebang but something gets out of order," he scolded.

"I never knowed a livin' man with such a frightful temper that didn't fetch up on the gallows," said his spinster aunt, sourly.

"You hold your tongue!" he shouted. "You're always snapping somebody up."

After he had finished his dinner, Peewitt paid a visit to the roof, accompanied by the family shovel, and succeeded in scraping an inch of skin off his shins against the ladder in his ascent.

"Well, by the jumping jingo! that's pleasant," he re- marked, as a gust of wind darted around the corner of the chimney, lifted his hat playfully off his head and carried it into his next-door neighbor's back yard, where a woolly and sharp-toothed spitz dog immediately pounced upon. and commenced relieving it of its crown, while Peewitt bound a handkerchief around his head, shouted himself hoarse, and opened a bombardment upon the dog with snow-balls, till the cook, hearing his yells, came out, rescued the hat, and threw it over the fence, where Peewitt, on going down, found it with the crown half chewed out and the rim looking like the top of a pepper-box.

Then Peewitt waxed wroth, jammed his seal-skin cap down over his ears, and tied it on so tight with a towel, that he couldn't open his mouth to let out the profane expressions that were seething through his mind, and at one time was in imminent danger of exploding and blowing himself and the shovel into a land where it's generally conceded to be too warm for snow-storms.

When he got back on the roof he buckled himself right down to work, and shoved about two hundred weight of

1

the "feathery flakes" down on his minister's head, who was bidding his wife "good-by" at the front door.

Then they carried the man of peace into the house, laid him on the sofa, bathed his face with water, held hartshorn under his nose, poured whiskey down him, and dropped all the keys and knives in the house down his back, and burned his mustache off holding a candle too close to him to see if he breathed. He came back to consciousness, finally, and they straightened the biggest dents out of his hat, dusted all the snow they could reach out of his shirtbosom, and sent him home in a hack, smelling like a distillery, and with a very indistinct recollection of how it all happened.

All this time Peewitt, in blissful ignorance of what had transpired below, had been gathering another snow mountain together, which he now launched over in time to bury an Italian image-vender, with his load of wares, who chanced to be passing.

Two Irishmen, in a coal cart, who had witnessed the sad affair, stopped and dug him out with their shovels, but it was two hours later before he had ceased gesticulating and rooting around in the snow-heap for his plaster of Paris mocking-birds and chalk dancing-girls.

Then Mrs. Peewitt sent up the hired girl to know if he intended to kill some person and be hung for it, and Peewitt suddenly became aware of the danger incurred by passers-by, and determined to hail them before throwing any more off; but this idea he was forced to abandon after he made two attempts to save life by shouting, "Hello, there! Look out!" owing to an immense crowd collecting on the opposite sidewalk under the impression that he was going to commit suicide by jumping off, and two policemen finally forced their way up and arrested him for creating a disturbance and blocking up the street.

He prevailed upon them to release him, after an explanation, and the crowd dispersed, hooting and advising the ueighbors, who had their heads out of the windows, to chain up their old bald-headed lunatic if they didn't want to get him hurt.

Then Peewitt concluded to shovel it down into the back yard, and his spinster aunt, who had run out to empty some

tea leaves, caught about a bushel of the first lot on the back of her neck, bringing her down on her knees, and sending her spectacles and false teeth flying into the swill-bucket. She had crawled into the house, and was sitting behind the kitchen stove rubbing herself with arnica, and thinking of the early Christian martyrs, before the second lot came down.

Two hours later, when Peewitt had got the roof cleaned, his spine nearly dislocated, his hands blistered, and his toes frost-bitten, he came down stairs to find he had broken two windows and blocked up the doors leading from the house into the garden, making all hopes of using them before the Fourth of July simply out of the question—a circumstance not calculated to soothe his feelings, owing to the winter's fuel being stowed away in a snowed-under shed at the back part of the garden.

THE WRECKER'S OATH ON BARNEGAT.

HENRY MORFord.

One night mid swarthy forms I lay,
Along a wild southeastern bay,

Within a cabin rude and rough,

Formed out of drift-wood, wrecker's stuff,

And firelight throwing rosy flame

From up-heaped masses of the same,―
Waiting the turning of the tide

To launch the surf-boats scattered wide,
And try the fisher's hardy toil
For bass, and other finny spoil.

They lay around me, young and old,
But men of hardy mien and mould,"
Whom one had picked some deed to do
Demanding iron hearts and true,
But whom one had not picked, if wise,
For playing tricks to blinded eyes,
Without expecting, at the end,

To learn the odds 'twixt foe and friend!

Some leaned upon their arms, and slept;
But others wakeful vigil kept,

And told short stories,-merry, half,
And some too earnest for a laugh.

And I-I listened, as I might,

With strange and weird and wild delight,
To hear the surfmen, in their haunt,
On deeds and loves and hates descant.

One gray old man, of whom I heard
No more than this descriptive word,
"Old Kennedy,"-he rattled on,
Of men and things long past and gone,
And seemed without one careful thought,-
Till spark to tinder some one brought
By hinting that he launched no more,
Of late, his surf-boat from the shore,
However wind and storm were rife
And stranded vessels periled life.

"No! by the God who made this tongue!"
And up in angry force he sprung,―
"No!-never, while my head is warm,
However wild beat sea and storm,
Launch I a boat, one life to save,
If half creation finds a grave!"

A fearful oath!-I thought; and so
Thought others, for a murmur low
Ran round the circle, till, at length,
The wondering feeling gathered strength,
And some, who had not known him long,
Declared them words of cruel wrong,
And swore to keep no friendly troth
With one who framed so hard an oath.

"You will not, mates ?" the old man said,
His words so earnest, dense, and dread
That something down my back ran cold
As at the ghostly tales of old.

"You will not? Listen, then, a word!
And if, when you have fairly heard,
You say a thoughtless oath I

swore,

I never fish beside you more!"

They listened: so did I, be sure,
As Desdemona to her Moor,

Or that poor" wedding guest" who heard
The Ancient Mariner's lengthy word.
They listened; and no murmur broke

The full, dead silence, as he spoke.

"You know me, mates,-at least the most,From Barnegat, on Jersey coast. "Tis time you listened something more, That drove me to another shore.